Giant alien bosses are invading Earth and it’s up to five young heroines to transform into Power Ranger-like characters (complete with their own color) to fight the baddies.  8 Color Star Guardians + lets you choose from 8 bosses in any order, like Mega Man, and then you fight them in turn based RPG fashion.  The game is also presented in only 8 colors, so it reminds me of those old computer monitors.  It’s available on Switch and PC, but reviewed on Switch here.

The main screen lets you pick from the 8 bosses and you can also edit who is in your party.  When you fight a boss, it’s a typical turn-based RPG battle where you pick from menu commands with the control stick and button.  When you defeat an enemy, sometimes one of your characters will learn a new skill.  In between battles, your characters will have a short conversation with each other.  If a boss defeats your party, you’ll start back out at the menu screen and they’ll have a short conversation with a subtle clue on a strategy to beat the boss.  When you beat them all, you’ll start a new chapter and the process over again.

Unfortunately I didn’t get that far because of the problems I had with the game.  If you are defeated and get that clue on how to beat that boss, and then come back later and try again, the text won’t repeat so if you forget what they said, you might be screwed.  And even with the clues, I couldn’t beat a couple of the bosses.  RPGs are fun when they have a balance of dungeon exploration, fun battles to level up with, and bosses with strategies to beat.  If you take out two of those things, you take out two thirds of the fun.  If beating RPG bosses with weird strategies right in a row sounds fun to you, then you might like this one.  But for me, I lost interest pretty quickly.

Kid Factor:

8 Color Star Guardians + is rated E-10 for ESRB descriptors of Mild Blood, Tobacco Reference, and Fantasy Violence.  You hit enemies with menu based attacks, and defeated characters just fall over and that’s about as violent as it gets.  I didn’t notice any blood, but the graphics are so bad I could’ve been looking at blood and not even known it.  And I didn’t notice any tobacco references either.  Reading skill is a must for the text, and because of that and the difficulty I’d say this one is best for older kids and up.

Tags: Game Reviews